


Under the Garden Arch

by tricia868



Category: Banner of the Damned - Sherwood Smith
Genre: F/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:01:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28145019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tricia868/pseuds/tricia868
Summary: Various moments from the course of Emras, Birdy, and Anhar's relationship
Relationships: Birdy Keperi / Anhar (Banner of the Damned), Birdy Keperi / Emras (Banner of the Damned, Emras (Banner of the Damned) & Anhar (Banner of the Damned)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Under the Garden Arch

**Author's Note:**

  * For [malachibi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/malachibi/gifts).



There was so much they didn’t tell you. Tests and traps that no one saw until after falling into them. The rules, supposedly, were simple. Do not interfere, keep the peace, and tell the truth as we see it.

When Emras was first sent away, classes weren’t the same. Birdy’s rivalry with Emras spurred him onward in his studies; competing with the others left a dry taste in his mouth.

Long before he realized what Emras meant to him, he realized that the lesson to her was a lesson to all of them. Not a single one of the scribe students made a move to help her. Her name became a taboo, mentioned only in hushed whispers on rare occasions. Tiflis attached herself to Sheris almost immediately, like a boat cast adrift and seeking shore. An echo, or a shadow, unsure how to strike out on her own.

What could happen to Emras, the best and brightest of them, could, after all, happen to anyone. No one liked to dwell too long on that possibility. Far easier to erase her from their vocabulary, as if she and her sin of pride had never existed.

And so when she returned from the kitchens, he treated her as a friend. Welcomed her back, and took responsibility for not helping her during her banishment when everyone received protocol marks and some of them would have blamed Emras for their own inaction. Birdy had yet to name his feelings for what they were, but he had realized that his life didn’t feel right without Emras in it.

\--

When Anhar requested the dye removed from her hair, she didn’t intend it as a test. It was merely a relief, a declaration of her release from the Colendi judgement and the threat of being ostracized for an accident of birth.

But of course, it too became a test. Each person she saw, who she might have counted as a friend before, had to choose whether to continue that alliance in light of her Chwahir ancestry. Nervous but defiant, Anhar was willing to risk any budding friendships rather than continue to hide herself. Each rejection would sting, but outside of Colend, it was worth _knowing_.

She couldn’t keep her face from flushing, but she managed to keep her voice even, her expression mostly neutral, when she met Emras. “The staff has a hair dresser here, who restored my natural color.”

She braced for Emras to turn away. The moment drew out longer than it had any right to, and she watched with sinking heart as realization settled over the other woman. The answer, when it finally came, was kind. "It is flattering."

Anhar's breath caught in the grip of a warm rush of gratitude and affection, her smile bright and her cheeks dimpled. Emras, at least, was willing to lay aside Colendi prejudice. Forever after, Anhar would consider her a true friend.

\--

Birdy never lied to Anhar, and she was far from unobservant. That he loved Emras was obvious to anyone who cared for them both. But she was never inclined to exclusivity. She was homesick and drawn to him, and he to her.

Anhar sought out Emras as often as she did Birdy, spending time together as friends. She valued Emras’ company, even if there was nothing romantic between them. And more time with Birdy could only be a good thing.

She looked after Emras and the rest of the wounded after the battle at the bridge with every bit of care and compassion she knew how to muster. She didn’t hope for any reward, kindness being its own aim. But when Birdy came to sit with them in the evenings once his work was done, Emras sandwiched between them, it was the best part of her day.

\--

“Did I do something wrong?” Birdy asked Anhar, direct beyond all politeness in the aftermath of their shared passion, that initially disastrous night in the pleasure house. Anhar had never made him feel the need to be polite, only to be kind. “With Emras?”

Trailing one hand along the lines of his arm, intertwining her fingers with his, she raised it to her lips before she answered. “Did she perhaps misunderstand the invitation? When she watches you, it’s the Garden Arch. It could be that _my_ presence was the problem. And so she politely took herself out of the way. But then, she froze like a statue when you kissed her.”

Birdy curled in close, breath warm against her shoulder. “She’s flinched away before, or not noticed how I felt. But I thought when she sought my company, when she didn’t mind sitting close to us both on the road, perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps she _does_ want me. Then tonight she seemed… almost repulsed, and I was too blinded by wanting you both to take proper notice until she was gone.”

Softly, Anhar assured him, “I think that if Emras wants anyone at all, it would be you.”

Birdy pressed his lips to Anhar’s shoulder, refraining from groaning only because it would be rude. Strained and uncertain, he drew the obvious conclusion. “She is _elor_ , then.”

“I believe she may be, though of course only Emras can say for certain.”

His breath was shaky. “I’ve wanted her for years. Since before I understood what passion was. We were rivals in our classes, then friends. Attraction grew alongside so slowly that I can’t say for certain when it started.”

“Then talk to her,” she urged, “and find out what she feels for you. You cannot decide what to do with it until you know that.”

\--

A part of Birdy wished that Emras had asked for him to stay, arguing for him when Queen Lasva. But Emras was always so conscious of the Scribe’s First Rule that of course she didn’t. That came as no surprise. Undue influence.

So he went back to Colend. He found a place for himself at Alarcansa, and he was happy enough there. He liked the duke, and the work was pleasant enough. He missed Emras and Anhar so badly it ached.

Anhar wrote him almost nightly, telling him about her life, carefully giving updates on what Emras was up to whenever she had occasion to. And she visited each year. When Em’s letters became fewer and farther between, and the rare letters he did receive were uncharacteristically evasive, he didn’t guess at the true cause.

He thought that she was becoming more Marlovan. He worried too that she had moved on, and her interest in him had waned. It wasn’t until Anhar visited and he had the chance to talk out some of his worry with her that he became worried for Emras rather than for the bond between them.

“We hardly see her. She rarely emerges from her tower, and when she does, she is… _ah-ye_ , she is as quiet as a ghost. She drifts among us but she doesn’t seem to be a part of our conversations. I’m not even certain that she listens.”

Birdy signed Rue with his hands. “And here I thought it was me. That she’d moved on, and lost interest. There isn’t anything wrong in that. It happens.”

“There’s no one else.” Of that much, Anhar was sure. “And she has always seemed steadfast, except that right now I am not sure anyone can reach her. Not even you. I try, when I see her.”

The smile he gave her was fond, and he leaned in for a brief kiss despite his worried abstraction. “Of course you do. Thank you for that.”

\--

He thought about it as they crossed the continent. The long gaps between letters, Anhar’s worry for Emras, the talk of a mage doing things contrary to all the usual rules. Emras learned in secret, not going through any of the prescribed channels. She might been responsible, not knowing any better. He hoped he was wrong. That it was just a silly passing notion, easily proven wrong when they met again.

“Tell her the rumor,” Birdy said to Kaidas, casually as possible.

He was careful not to watch Emras every second, lest he draw attention to his own doubts, but his gaze strayed frequently back to her, gauging the tension in the lines of her shoulders, the grip of her hands on her fans.

He let Lasva and Kaidas discuss weather magic, and when Anhar turned to Emras for an explanation, Em’s voice was worryingly strained as she replied, “I have not studied weather magic.”

“What I do not comprehend,” Lasva said, “is why anyone would want to do such a thing. I do not mean the pair of fools, I mean the evil mage. Though I can imagine that my sister inquired closely into the intent of that pair of fools.”

“Evil has its own purpose,” Kaidas said. “So we’re told. Tip a rock for the fun of seeing an avalanche. No thought to anyone below.”

“It wouldn’t have to be evil intent,” Birdy said, gaze on Emras. He was almost certain now, after watching her go pale and quiet.

“Surely you do not claim a benign intent?” Lasva responded, her fan flicking upward in mock horror.

Birdy knew Emras. He knew that whatever her intent, it was never harm. He watched her carefully as he mused, “What if there was no intent at all? What if someone merely thought to experiment? Someone who has, perhaps, slowly shifted from doing what is right for the common good to justifying doing what feels good.”

He saw the dawning horror on her face as she realized that he knew, all of his doubts completely dispelled. She was responsible for the floods and the droughts, and who knew what else. But he still loved her, and he worried for her.

“Emras, are you alright? You look pale.”

“You have been sitting too long,” Anhar said, kind as ever, alert to the comfort of those around her. Birdy loved her for that. “Would you like me to fetch you some healer’s steep?”

“I am fine,” Emras insisted, offering no excuses, a sign of something truly wrong. But she stayed quiet until she managed to make a retreat.

\--

Then came nine long months of worry, as Emras vanished. He began to wonder if they’d lost her entirely. If she had fled, or tried some magic too powerful to handle out of desperation, though he’d kept the confrontation as subtle as possible, making it clear that he understood her intentions when she started down this road.

It was an unspeakable _relief_ when she finally reappeared and summoned him, offering to bare the truth to him and Anhar. A long time coming, finally having the chance to love her any way but from afar. There had always been the distance before, even when they were in the same room, of secrets between them.

Even if a part of him still wished she would want him, fall into his arms and kiss him, he knew that wasn’t the way she was made. Jokes to the contrary, he had resigned himself to that a long time ago. But he still wanted her to trust him. To lean on him.

“The other thing I thought you might say,” he said, laying all humor aside, “would be, _Birdy, I was so lonely._ ”

She echoed the words back to him, voice shaking, and he fell to his knees next to the bed. “Talk to me, Em. Just talk. Tell me why you pushed us away, even after we found out you were a mage.”

The truth, when it came, was worse than he expected. Birdy would have shared his thoughts with Emras freely, answered anything she asked openly, but it was still a desperate relief to hear that she had only spied on him the once. He didn’t fully grasp the depth of it until he reached for the dyr himself, feeling Emras’ and Anhar’s emotions reflected back at him.

“It’s like you poked me from the inside of my skull.” He couldn’t get rid of the thing fast enough, flinging both the physical object and the problem back into Emras’ lap. “That’s enough of _that_. It’s…”

He hesitated to say the word evil outright. Throughout all of this, one point had remained firm in his mind. Emras wasn’t evil. Whatever the results of her magic, she was good, deep down. “Dizzying. So this is what mages learn to use?”

He couldn’t blame Anhar when she exhibited none of the same restraint when he urged her to speak, his head aching. Anhar, who was always alert to other people’s pain, who cared for everyone she loved, said “That kind of trespass, it is almost as evil as days before written history, when there was sex without consent.”

She wasn’t wrong. It _was_ forced intimacy, albeit in a different form. The mind rather than the body.

Birdy didn’t like to be sent away again, but far better to be sent by Em, knowing everything and able to help her, than to be sent away by someone else with no purpose ahead of him. And if he could put that evil object out of reach, where no one would be tempted to use it for centuries, so much the better.

\--

She never came to their home during her ten years of restitution. Birdy had promised that there would always be a place for her. Though she took him at his word, answering his letters during her travels, she couldn’t stop and rest. The wrench of leaving almost immediately would be too much to bear.

A decade and more later, her feelings hadn’t wavered, and so when her obligation was finally discharged, she made her way to Vasande Leror, to the beautiful rose garden and door opened wide. To Lasva, whose trust she betrayed, and who forgave her and loved her still. To Anhar, who always did her best to understand, and to smooth the path beneath their feet. And to Birdy most of all.

“Birdy!” Anhar called in delight when she saw the familiar face, careworn by all the years that had passed. “Birdy, Lasva! She’s here!”

Anhar embraced her like a sister, and Emras’ eyes burned with unshed tears. _Oh_ , it was nice to be welcomed, to see the face of someone who loved her. Anhar had lines at the corners of her eyes now from smiling, and her dark eyes were as kind as ever

Lasva gripped her hands briefly, eyes bright. “Welcome back.” And then she stepped aside, laughing at the sound of feet running down the hall, Birdy’s slippers sliding on the hardwood boards of the floor as he rounded the corner. Lasva's laugh was lighter than Emras remembered. Finally, Lasva was happy again. It was more real somehow, hearing that laugh, than it ever had been in letters.

When Birdy pulled her close this time, she didn’t feel crowded. He wasn’t ardent or demanding, only loving and unspeakably grateful to have her back again. As always, Birdy undid her completely. She cried in earnest then. She was _home_.

It was almost like emerging from the tower all over again. She’d had letters to comfort her, and never left them to languish unanswered as she did during that long, fraught untangling of the Choreid Dhelerei wards. She didn’t keep secrets any longer. She had no more left to keep. But for ten years she had wandered the land, driven like the wind, focused intently on the task at hand.

She sat in the rose garden debating points of history and philosophy with Birdy. She practiced fan form with the household, her body remembering it despite the passage of time. She took turns with Anhar reading aloud at night, and baked Colendi breads together with Anhar’s pastry chef lover.

It stung sometimes, making memories. Being a part of the world. But her edges weren’t nearly as raw this time around, when she hadn’t spent years hiding in other people’s experiences. And _ah ye_ , this life was a good one.


End file.
